


Stars Fall

by Femmetac



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9338762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Femmetac/pseuds/Femmetac
Summary: The aftermath of Dembe's talk with Liz in 4x10 (The Forecaster)/can be construed as an episode fix





	

_Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love_. –Shakespeare

 

 

  

“Was what Dembe said true?” she asked the moment Red opened the door. “Did you kill Kate?”

 

Her brow furrowed, voice quaking with disbelief and shock. Reddington stood frozen in the doorway, in his shock not even thinking to motion her inside; he simply stood there, his mouth working to get the words out. In the end he merely gave up and nodded slightly, hanging his head in regret even though he still could not voice it.

 

Liz’s hand reached for her throat, as if to stop the tears from escaping, but they pooled in her eyes and trickled over. “Why would you do such a thing? You were—“

 

“We weren’t friends, Lizzie,” Red shook his head, standing back at last to let her in, “a colleague perhaps, one I trusted. No more.”

 

The statement stood. _No more_. No more could he trust her, no more were they colleagues, so no more did she live. But Elizabeth would not accept that answer. She shook her head and stalked into the safehouse, clenching and unclenching her fists, wanting to strike something, strike him, strike out at anything, everything. This was her fault, she realized as she faced out the window, not even registering the lingering light of sunset. _Why_? _Why why why_? The question repeated in her head over and over like a dismal mantra.

 

“How did you do it?” she asked dully, not really wanting to know.

“Elizabeth—“

“No! No ‘Lizzie,’ no ‘Elizabeth,’ no placating me Reddington!” she said, turning on the spot to face him. “I’m the reason you did this. I am the reason that woman is dead! If I hadn’t—“ she broke off, gasping for breath amidst the wracking sobs that shook her. “If I hadn’t done what I did, you would never have—“

“If she hadn’t suggested it, you never would have done it—“ he cut in gratingly. Red crossed to her and took both her arms, his face stern. “This is not your fault, Elizabeth. This is her fault.”

“And mine,” he muttered as he dropped her arms and turned to face out the window himself.

He was silent for several long moments, and though Liz balked at the palpable tension in the room her anger dissolved at the grief she had seen in the wash of unshed tears in his eyes before he broke away from her, now evident in the defeated sag of his shoulders as he stood with his back to her, in a gilded frame of the dying light of day.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply, feelingly.

He only shifted, his head nodding again as he turned slowly.

“I was…not in a good place when I lost you,” he said, his Adam’s apple worked in his throat as he swallowed back the tears that still wanted to flow. Red took a steadying breath as she stepped up to him for the first time in ages and wrapped her arms around his neck. The sob still trapped in his chest tightened as he dipped his face to her hair and breathed in the scent of her, sporty and clean, a streak of femininity in a swath of tomboy. He loved it. He loved her.

She held on for a long moment, feeling his chest heaving against hers. She knew he was holding back tears and for the first time since they had seen each other again, she saw his grief and it cut her that she had done this to him. Knowingly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

She urged him over to the settee, taking his hand as she sat next to him, angled toward him, knees touching. Giving his hand a squeeze, she tried another question.

“Do you remember me saying before I passed out, that I love you?”

Red chewed at the inside of her cheek, scarcely meeting her concerned gaze. A slight nod.

“I meant that, Raymond,” she said, trying out his name on her tongue for what felt like the first time. “I do love you. But I felt that with everything going to hell around us that I had to do what I did and that it was the only way for Agnes. And for me too.”

Tears trickled down her face. He sniffed audibly, forcing his back, and looked away. But he squeezed her hand, just once.

“I know that Lizzie, I know,” he whispered. He nodded once more, cleared his throat and made to rise. “I told you once, I would walk out of your life, and all you had to do was say the word. With Solomon bearing down on you though, not knowing who he was working for at the time or what they wanted…”

Liz put a hand on his arm to stop him, and he glanced over to her, a pall of grief over his features.

“I know. Every time I turn around you’re trying to save me from somebody,” she smiled ruefully, rubbing her hand up and down his arm. “I wish you hadn’t done what you did to Kate though. She was only trying to help.”

Red grimaced and shook his head. “Lizzie, in my line of work if I don’t have absolute trust in an associate, I have nothing.”

“How did she break your trust though,” Liz queried. “She made a snap decision without you, but she told me the day I met her that she had two objectives and the first was to keep me safe. That’s what she thought she was doing.”

Red’s mouth was still a tight line. His head shook almost imperceptibly.

“Where is she?” Liz asked.

“Elizabeth,” he sighed, “please, I can’t.”

“I want to see her,” Liz urged, “to pay my respects, to get some closure.”

Red’s voice tightened once again mournfully, “you don’t want to go there.”

An ominous trickle went down Liz’s spine.

“Where is she?” Liz asked, trepidation tinging her voice.

Silence. Red merely shook his head more vehemently now, staring into the darkness of the room.

“Raymond,” she urged softly, using his given name for comfort where she would typically use his last name for reprisal. “Tell me. Tell me and we can fix it. Raymond, we’ll fix it together. Okay?”

“In the—,” he cleared his throat, “in the woods. I took her…out to a virgin forest. She always wanted to find a place…middle of nowhere.” He struggled to speak, forcing himself through it as if to unburden himself of the memory. “I told her,” he wavered a moment, working his mouth, “I told her I had to. She knew all my secrets and she was a wild card now. I need to know all the cards and how the deck is stacked. I can’t have that on my team and I can’t just let her—“

He broke off. Liz squeezed his hand, silently urging him to continue. Her training told her that in the gaping space of silence people were compelled to fill it, and it is that time when patience is most valuable. So she waited.

“I shot her,” he said at last, not daring to look over at her, fearing the judgment he would see there. “One shot to the head, and she went down, in a halo of sunlight.” He whispered the last few words reverently, as if reliving it again. She knew he could see it in his mind’s eye, and knew that the scars he had been trying to cover over that pain with had been ripped open. Yet this confession between them, was like a lance, flushing out the grief and the guilt. It was done and she knew he regretted it, just as she knew the cold logic of why he had done it in the first place.

She did not agree with his actions—not in the slightest—but her clinical experience said to let him grieve and stay neutral. At the same time, her heart ached for Kate and what Liz herself had wrought. She wished she could cut a swath through Solomon and his men, through Kirk for sending them and bringing about this whole mess. It was her guilt to bear just as much as Red’s.

The next question she asked hesitantly, already sure of the answer and dreading it all the same. “Did you bury her there?”

She ran her thumb back and forth over his hand, more comfort. Whether he noticed or not consciously, whether he even acknowledged it, his body felt the sensation and his being accepted it. “No,” was the flat reply. “I couldn’t.” He looked at Liz at last, as if pleading for understanding. “I couldn’t look at her. At what I’d done. I’ve known her for…years.” He whispered that last and rolled his tongue between his teeth.

“She was your friend,” Liz nodded, even as Red tried to shake his head in denial. “I don’t care what reputation you have to keep in the world where you work, but that’s exactly what she was. And you cared about her. You care about Dembe. You care about me,” she pressed on. “We are your friends. We work together because it’s our job. We want to because we care. I know it makes you vulnerable because you worry for our safety, but it also makes you stronger because you have us.”

Red looked at Lizzie once more, anguish warring with relief and adoration. He felt her warmth like a balm, like the light he had talked about years ago.

“That’s right,” she said, smiling gently, “you are loved, you have friends, and we will fix this. We’ll go back together and do right by her. You and I both owe it to her to do this. We’ll put her to rest. Okay?”

“Yes,” he said more strongly at last, squeezing her hand. “Yes we will.”


End file.
